June 13th, 2009

AT&T said it will issue a  new privacy policy to replace the 17 policies used today by its different subsidiaries. It addresses the topic of that hearing directly, asserting that the company does not use technology called deep packet inspection to track the surfing behavior of its Internet customers to use in advertising.

Moreover, the policy says the company is working on other ways to explain how data is used to customize advertisements. AT&T’s privacy policy, perhaps more than for other companies, has a political component. Its previous policy, issued six months after the warrantless wiretapping program was first published, says in the third paragraph:

Anyway, we also have an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies responsible for protecting the public welfare, whether it be an individual or the security interests of the entire nation.

In general, the new document shows that AT&T has access to a vast amount of information about people, and it claims the right for all parts of AT&T to do almost anything with that data, including trying to sell customers other services, set prices and sell advertising to other companies.

AT&T set several limits, most significantly that it will not sell personal information about customers to third parties, but, certainly, that it publishes the name, address and phone numbers of all its local telephone customers who do not pay for unlisted numbers.

The site is frank about the fact that it will give information about you in response to government subpoenas, government orders and lawful discovery requests in civil suits.

AT&T does not say it will notify you in advance that it is going to turn over information in response to a government order or lawsuit, except in the case of TV viewing information where such notice is required by law.

The policy offers only one significant choice, that is, customers can send an e-mail to request that AT&T not market to them by e-mail, telephone or postal mail. Besides, it offers a procedure for customers to request the billing information AT&T keeps about them, but it does not offer a window onto the Web tracking, television usage monitoring and location following that the company does.